


poison in tooth and claw

by sibley (ferns)



Category: Secret Six
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Canon Rewrite, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Roleswap, romantic relationships are more implied than anything, this is mostly found family/team as family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22025977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: There are six and a half of them in the box. The puppeteer, the thief, the witch, the detective, the Talon... and the assassin.Or, Thomas is not the cat in the Riddler's coffin.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	poison in tooth and claw

**Author's Note:**

  * For [punkfistfights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkfistfights/gifts).



> Not only is this a rewrite, but I'm squashing continuity together to make one continuous timeline. Basically, all the events of the pre-52 Secret Six comics are still canon, with only minimal smoothing over to make things fit a bit better, so all the big events are the same. Title, of course, comes from the phrase "red in tooth and claw" in the poem "In Memoriam A.H.H." by Lord Alfred Tennyson. Thanks for letting me dump all this on you, Tee. I hope you like it.
> 
> [ **CW:** this fic contains discussions of past perceived child death (i.e., Thomas lying to Jade about their son being dead), a reference to a past miscarriage, Secret Six-typical levels of violence including mentions of death/murder (of adults), implications of the child abuse experienced by Jade and by the Talons (obviously in this case specifically Strix) of the Court of Owls, and one or two references to sexual situations. It's definitely on the tamer side, at least for the Six, but the perceived child death and the past child abuse is a big part of things even if it's more in theming than in text.]

There are six and a half of them packed together inside the box, the coffin buried deep under the sea. The air is unmoving and stifling, but Jade can still taste the salt on her lips. Like ciguatera and tetrodotoxin and Lionfish.

There are six and a half of them in the box.

Kani. Porcelain. They toss their head elegantly and easily crack the cuffs around Jade’s wrist when they say their name. Enough of a threat to warrant watching, but they’re barely even a petty crook. Jade could take them with one hand behind her back on a bad day.

Shauna Belzer. Ventriloquist. And her half, the puppet she’s somehow brought to life without a second thought. This one can be classified as a threat, but not a severe one. If she tries anything, Jade is sure she’ll be able to break her neck.

Strix. Strix who kills people. Jade recognizes the work of the Court of Owls. It’s ingrained in the very way that she sits, perched more than crouched, hunched over with her claws braced against the pad of paper she clutches close. That doesn’t mean she likes seeing it.

Irene Craigie. No powers. She says she’s a private investigator. Jade can tell she’s watching her, wary of a fight. Probably because she knows she’d lose. Jade can tell that though she’s scarred, she’s hardly a trained killer.

Black Alice. This one Jade knows. Lori Zechlin. She’s seen her moving with them. The “Secret Six.” She hasn’t been part of them for awhile now, but Jade remembers her as dangerous. A potential threat.

They escape the box. Jade wasn’t concerned about that. Nor is she worried about a new potential enemy. They can get in line behind the others who want her head.

* * *

They take refuge at Craigie’s house. It’s kind of her, but Jade expects an ulterior motive. Everybody has one. When the other shoe drops and they’re attacked, there’s no time to blame anybody before Porcelain is rushing to shield Craigie herself from the blows—evidently, Jade was right about her not being a fighter, and everybody else could see it too.

Jade could choose to attack their leader, Scandal Savage. She could attack the bansidhe as revenge for spoiling her contracts and plans. She could destroy the freakish one, Ragdoll. But there is another, more pressing matter to attend to.

This isn’t the only way that she’s pressed Thomas, father of her child, into the floor, and tragically it’s the least entertaining. They both get blows in. She barely manages to restrain herself from killing him on the spot, ripping his throat out with her teeth or nails like a lioness. He lied to her and led her to believe that their son,  _ her _ son, was dead. That’s an offense punishable with death.

In the end, she releases him, and lets him go to lick his wounds with his friends. They were always one of his greatest weaknesses. They’ll lead him to his death one day, Jade is sure of it, but today can’t be that day. Soon, she’ll force him to reckon with her for letting her believe her son—and what has he ever done for their baby? He was always more  _ hers  _ than he was  _ his— _ was dead. But not today.

Craigie asks her why she targeted him specifically. Maybe she thinks that Jade owes her an answer because she’s staying in her house. Too small for all of them to fit comfortably but still too big for just Craigie to occupy, like she gets swallowed whole every time she steps through the doors. Now, Jade knows she doesn’t owe her shit, much less the truth, but something deep inside her wells up and makes her say “He kept my son from me.”

Craigie looks even smaller, dwarfed by the size of the house around her with her eyes shadowed and exhausted. “I almost had a son, once. Or maybe a daughter. We never knew.”

Without even thinking about it, Jade rests her hand on her shoulder. A moment of weakness. She’s been having too many of those lately.

* * *

Belzer and Porcelain are the ones who confront Craigie. Porcelain has a picture of a man and a woman together, eyes alight and smiling. Jade isn’t quite sure what all of this is supposed to be about, but it might give her a chance to split from this little circus act before anything else can happen that endangers her life.

Of course Jade had known Craigie was lying about  _ something.  _ But she had assumed that it had been about having metahuman powers, not about her entire identity. Sloppy. But she’s still confident that she’s no fighter, and it’s proven when Jade rushes her easily and holds her to the ground, cheek in the grass.

She doesn’t struggle. Just looks up at Jade and the others. She looks so tired. “The Riddler. He’s the Riddler. The Mockingbird, the one who put us in that box, is the Riddler.”

As it turns out, Craigie’s name isn’t Craigie, Irene or otherwise. It’s Dibny, Sue Dibny. Later she mentions, offhand, that she picked the alias for Irene Adler—and, she says, maybe for an old friend named Iris, too—and for Cecilia Craigie, mother of Joseph Bell, the man who inspired Sherlock Holmes.

Lori is the only one who doesn’t say anything when they’re all loaded up into their stolen van and headed somewhere that’s bound to be a trap, eyes wide and fixed on Craigie-Dibny as they drive. Jade’s watching all of them. No matter who or what is waiting for them at their destination, she’s going to make sure that she gets out of there alive. Even if she has to leave the rest of them behind.

Craigie-Dibny explains how they got there as they go. Jade remembers the boat, of course. Security wasn’t usually what she was required for, but she’d been contacted and told that she’d be paid handsomely to ensure that no one attempting to steal the India Star made it off the boat alive. Obviously she had failed, though Jade hadn’t at all been worried about that, too focused on watching Thomas do the same job from across the room the entire night.

Jade Nguyen is not a  _ thief,  _ but she appears to have found herself in the company of them. Thieves and a detective and another assassin.

It is a trap, of course. Just like Jade knew it would be. The Riddler is there, as are a good handful of his henchmen. They’re all dressed alike, velvety green suits like they’re going to a St. Patrick’s Day party. Two of them are holding a man between them, the man from the picture Porcelain and Belzer had. He’s also dressed in a green suit, but his nose is bleeding, red dripping down his chin past the heavy Belle Reve-style inhibitor at his neck and staining his tie.

Jade recognizes him, vaguely, though clearly not as much as Porcelain does, and they glare at him as they slip into unconsciousness from the dart shot into their neck.

Two of them fall beside Porcelain—Belzer and her puppet, lifeless now that its animator is sprawled on the pier, and Black Alice, struggling to stay awake and losing that internal battle. The Talon, Strix, stays, perched on top of the van with her eyes narrowed behind her mask. Craigie-Dibny never once takes her eyes off the bleeding man. And Jade tugs the dart from her skin easily and casts it aside. Working around poisons and toxins means developing an immunity to them. The way the Riddler had gassed her to get her into that coffin in the first place was a miracle, and not a trick that she’ll let him repeat.

Jade and Strix move for the Riddler at the same time.

Even with half a dozen goons to go through, he’s laughably outclassed by the two of them. He would be if there were only one killer going for his throat, and he stands even less of a chance now that there’s two. Jade knows that she’s considered to be one of the best martial artists in the world, and she knows that she deserves it. But watching Strix… she almost wonders if this sharpened weapon of a girl might be better.

She doesn’t deliver taunts when she prepares to snap his neck. She doesn’t even mean to hesitate. But she does, so the click of the gun pressing into the back of her head has a chance to register.

“Sorry,” the man Craigie-Dibny hasn’t stopped watching says apologetically from behind the gun. “I really don’t want to do this. But you’ve gotta let him up.”

Jade hears the soft sound of Strix’s claws scraping the wood of the pier as she reluctantly stands. She has no doubt that she can take on him, too, of course. But first she’ll have to get the gun away from him. She doesn’t have her poisons, there’s no way to ensure they all die a slow and painful death with just a scratch. It will have to be personal. And personal killing means keeping the guns away from greedy hands.

“Don’t do this, sweetie,” Craigie-Dibny begs. Good, she’s distracting him. That will make it so much easier to strike. “Please, not even for me. You know he won’t really kill me, you don’t have to do this…”

The rush of Riddler’s cane arching through the air allows Jade to duck and then dodge, spinning to sweep his legs out from under him and crack his skull against the dock.

And then the Riddler says there’s a bomb and holds up a detonator tied to his wrist.

* * *

Jade doesn’t go with Black Alice and Craigie-Dibny to the hospital.

(If she had, she would have seen the way Craigie-Dibny gently held the girl’s hand, speaking to her the entire time she was asleep. The way that Black Alice clung to her from the second she woke up, eyes filled with tears.

She would have remembered from her research that Black Alice lost her mother when she was young. That it was her who found the body. Contemplated that perhaps she was simply trying to fill that hole in her heart, and that maybe from what Craigie-Dibny had said, she was trying to fill her own holes, too.)

She doesn’t leave this ragtag group altogether, though. Something holds her back. Keeps her eyes on Strix, the Talon. She’s a potential threat, of course. That’s why she’s doing it. The Court teaches their claws well. Perhaps even better than the League of Assassins, not that she would voice that assumption to any League personnel. So she must watch her, this Talon who must be so much older than her and yet seems so truly young.

Porcelain and the Ventriloquist attempt to keep each other entertained as they wait for news. Jade does her best to ignore them. Their games are of no interest to her, not when she is trying to keep her eyes peeled for potential ambushes while ensuring that the Talon remains an ally for the time being.

The demon Etrigan does not come for them, but the “true Atlanteans” do, shedding water but not the glamour that Jade can practically smell on them and reaching out and promising that they can save Black Alice if they destroy the world. Jade doesn’t care for a world that allows so many atrocities to happen, and she knows for a fact that the world doesn’t care for her, but that doesn’t mean she wants it  _ gone. _

Their children deserve a world to grow old in. Even if hers are lost to her.

The Craigie-Dibny (fine,  _ just  _ Dibny) woman says the same thing. Says that they aren’t going to destroy the world. Jade tells her that she knows the so-called “true Atlanteans” aren’t who they say they were. (Just like Irene Craigie wasn’t who she said she was, though she doesn’t voice that thought aloud.) Dibny frowns and looks down at where Black Alice is curled into her side, hospital bracelet still looped around her wrist.

“I think I know somebody we can call for help,” she says at last, gently running her fingers down the back of Black Alice’s head. “But I don’t know where we can bring Lori to keep her safe.”

Jade surprises herself when she says “I do.”

As much as he has wronged her, there is a reason why she chose Thomas to be one of her lovers past simple vanity. He’s of strong stock, physically in peak condition and mentally damn near unbreakable, and he’s willing to die to protect his pride as much as she sometimes thinks that he should abandon them to save his own pelt. And the Savage heir, Scandal, is as imposing as they come in addition to the experience that she has with the magic thief herself, so even with the unfortunate guests of the bansidhe and the contortionist, they will make suitable guardians.

Surprise flashes across Dibny’s face in the briefest flicker of wings when Jade explains. “Are you sure?” Jade opens her mouth to state that if she’s concerned about their handling of Black Alice’s needs, they’ve already lived with her once, but the woman continues. “You said that Catman—you said that he kept your son from you. Having them watch her… is that what you want? I have connections. We can find somebody else.”

Jade stops, surprised. There’s a twist in her throat that makes it hard to breathe, much less speak. For a moment it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what’s making the ground dip beneath her feet. It has been a very, very long time since someone expressed concern for her wellbeing that seemed to be completely genuine. Even longer, perhaps, since it had come from a woman. 

“They’re our best option,” she says finally. “I would trust Scandal Savage to protect my own daughter. And I chose Thomas as the father of my son. We should bring Alice to them. They’ll keep her safe until we can find a solution.”

“So you’re staying to help?” Dibny’s voice floods with relief.

Jade inclines her head. She knows she should leave. But she wants to see this through, even if it’s just to watch it all go up in flames. (Though she’s not quite sure she believes that excuse.)

The person Dibny decided to call for help turns out to be more than just  _ one  _ someone. It’s not even just one group. The Shadowpact and the Croatoans, they call themselves. Witches and detectives. The witches seem listless, even the youngest one, who clings to Dibny’s arm practically the entire time when she isn’t relaying information back and forth between both clusters. 

Black Alice is safe with Scandal and her people, Jade truly believes that. But from the sound of things, this isn’t a job for thieves or witches or detectives or assassins or women who can make puppets dance. It’s a job for Superman.

The Croatoans seem to agree with her. The ape does, at least. Jade never thought she’d find herself agreeing with something like  _ that.  _ The Shadowpact members argue with him, though Dibny and the girl attached to her seem to be more inclined to siding with the chimp. The argument gets so heated that the detectives leave, taking their little witch girl with them, and the magicians go back to squabbling amongst themselves. 

Jade tells herself that whatever they decide isn’t really her concern and focuses on protecting their perimeter. The Talon springs from tree to tree beside her in tandem without being asked. She’s truly graceful up there, in a way that Jade herself could never really hope to be. She must have been an acrobat, once, or at least she was trained to be one—maybe it was in another life. 

Superman does come, eventually. So do the mages. Jade prepares for war.

This is not her preferred battlefield, and metahumans and magicians aren’t her preferred opponents. If she knew what was good for her, she’d slip away into the shadows and never come back. Nothing good can come of helping those who have already betrayed her once and seem perfectly willing and capable of doing it again. She has no doubt that if something happens and she falls, Dibny will cut her losses and run to steal Black Alice away over helping her up. 

But before a fight can break out, Black Alice reappears, enveloping Dibny in a hug and pressing her face into her shoulder. Jade doesn’t hear what she tells her. She doesn’t have to. Their faces say enough.

Strix watches them, standing up on the balls of her feet. Everybody else is keeping an eye on Superman. But not her. Something in Jade’s heart pangs.

* * *

Lian could have been a great assassin, if she’d been raised in the craft. She could have struck silently and then been gone in a flicker of blades and poisons. She could have been beautiful.  _ They  _ could have been beautiful together. A legacy of the only life that Jade had ever been able to fit into. Simple as a sword slipping into a sheath.

But she doesn’t want this for Lian, does she? It never could have been right for her to fight like this. At least with her father she’ll be protected. Roy was a fantastic lover, but more than that, he was a good man surrounded by other good men, and when they failed he was surrounded by even better women. Allowing him to raise Lian had been the right decision. The only real one she could have made. And Thomas,  _ Tommy…  _

She may hate Thomas forever for letting her believe that her son was dead. Murdered. It’s the least he deserves for convincing her he let him drop to the pavement. But at least he’s out of this life. At least he’s safe. She watches him and his new family (the only one he’ll ever really know) sometimes. When he’s older she’ll talk to him, she really will, but for now she’ll let him stay innocent. God knows someone deserves the chance to be.

It’s impossible for her not to see them in Strix.

She is not Jade’s children. The Court wouldn’t have even been a part of the groups that trained either of them. She doesn’t really resemble either of them, not that Jade’s seen much of her behind her mask or her ever-present bandages. But how could she not compare them? It’s not the same for Jade to look at herself and then at them. It doesn’t take a genius to know that no child deserves the life she’s had. Lian and her beautiful son would  _ never  _ go through what she had—Jade would rather die than allow it, and for all their many faults it’s somewhat comforting to know that Roy and Thomas would too. A child raised to be a weapon for an order she had no control over, on the other hand, was a different story entirely.

At least the others are kind to her. Porcelain seems to have decided to take her on as a younger sister, which is certainly admirable. Black Alice has shown her the joy of temporary tattoos. Dibny’s insistence on mothering Black Alice obviously extends to Strix as well. Even the disgusting puppet doesn’t go out of its way to be cruel to her, which means that obviously Belzer is doing the same.

Jade keeps repeating to herself that she’ll be leaving soon. The second she manages to get her thoughts in order and can pack the meager amount of belongings she was able to bring (and  _ wanted  _ to bring—only her essential poisons came with her, for example. God knows what would happen if she left that kind of thing laying around in a house of strangers) she’s going to take the opportunity to get out of town. She’s just waiting for the right time to present itself. That’s all.

And then Lady Shiva comes for Strix.

Jade could never beat her. Nobody could. Lady Shiva would never even allow her to get close enough to cut her with poisons. Attempting would be useless. If she wants Strix as her own for the League of Assassins, then she’s going to take her. But…

Strix may seem like a child, but they both know that she isn’t one. It wouldn’t be the same for her to blossom in the League of Shadows as it would be for Lian, who is still so young as she fumbles for her father’s longbows that are much too heavy for her to pull back. It wouldn’t be the same as if Tommy had grown up within their order like she had once wanted him to back when he was still growing inside her. It wouldn’t be the same. Jade still can’t allow it to happen.

_ “Run,”  _ she hisses to her the second she catches wind of the fact that Lady Shiva is on the hunt. Even if it is against her better judgement and with the distant knowledge that being a part of this gang has softened her considerably.

Strix shakes her head and scrawls out two words on her pad, underlining them half a dozen times before shoving them into Jade’s face.  _ WONT RUN.  _ She taps them for emphasis.

Jade takes a deep breath and nods. She can’t argue. She does, however, offer her hand, and Strix takes it as they walk around the house to the front yard. They stand together, waiting for Lady Shiva to arrive. Jade resolutely keeps her eyes ahead even as Strix pulls off her bandages and lays them aside to face the oncoming storm as she is. Even as she leans into Jade’s side and squeezes her fingers so tightly it hurts.

Strix stepping away from her and allowing Lady Shiva to lead her away is the bravest thing she’s ever seen. Jade doesn’t say anything. The others do—Belzer and her puppet are nowhere to be found, though Jade wonders if they’re watching from the inside through the windows, but Dibny and Porcelain and even Black Alice try to convince her to stay. 

Jade doesn’t say anything and wonders if she even can, or if all anybody would hear is a broken scream.

* * *

It is not the first time Jade has readied herself for a war. Not even the first time in the last few weeks. But never before has it been against someone as powerful and capable of Lady Shiva. Even Superman can be poisoned, albeit not with anything she  _ currently  _ has in her arsenal. Lady Shiva has no weaknesses. Maybe Sandra Wu-San does, but Jade never discovered them, not even in the heat of passionate nights. There’s nothing any of them can do.

Evidently, that isn’t going to stop the rest of them from trying.

Dibny is pacing, hands clenched into fists at her sides. Porcelain watches her, occasionally voicing some reluctance to attempting a so-called “rescue mission” because of how it would dishonor the sacrifice that Strix made for them. It’s the kind of opinion that gets Jade to finally admit that they’re a very sensible young man. Belzer is talking to her puppet, though not about anything important enough to pay attention to. Black Alice wrings her hands and shyly wonders aloud if she should try praying. Jade still says nothing.

The man who tried to shoot her on the pier walks through the door, and she barely spares him a second glance. Even though the inhibitor is gone, he can’t do anything to her. He’s no hardened killer. She’s not going to have to worry about him trying anything again. Porcelain and Black Alice and Belzer are wary enough of him for all of them.

Jade stares down into her hands and makes plans. Porcelain is right that it would dishonor Strix’s sacrifice to pretend that she didn’t willingly leave to save all of them. Honor is important in the League of Assassins, just like it is in the Court of Owls. Just like it is  _ everywhere— _ Jade’s sure even the  _ Justice League  _ have that kind of system, even if it’s just for something as trivial as whatever passes for grunt work up on their satellite. It would also dishonor her not to try to get her back. To deem her as unimportant and give up on her the way Batgirl did.

_ That  _ pulls Jade’s expression into a sneer. She doesn’t like bats, being more of a cat person herself, and she likes them even less when they try to meddle in her affairs. Especially when those affairs involve people like Strix.

It’s a full two and a half days later when she stands up from her seat and announces that she’s going to get Strix back. Porcelain puts up some reluctant resistance, but agrees that Strix deserves a far better life than the one the League of Assassins could give her. Their biggest issue seems to be in not knowing if Strix even  _ wants  _ to come back. Black Alice just follows Dibny’s lead, and she agrees wholeheartedly that they need to save her. Dibny’s husband clearly recognizes that he doesn’t get a say. He just keeps standing at her side with his arm wrapped around her waist half a dozen times.

Jade calls Thomas about half an hour later and ignores his initial question about how she got his number. “Blake. Would Savage’s team be willing to take on the League of Assassins unpaid to get our Talon back?”

There’s a long silence before Jade hears a distant hushed conversation too fast to make out on the other side of the line. When she finally gets an answer, it’s from Scandal Savage herself. “You can expect us at your house in two and a half hours.”

She hangs up before Jade can correct her—it’s not  _ her  _ house. It’s Dibny’s. Maybe Black Alice and Porcelain and Belzer’s too. Not Jade’s. It never could be, even if there is something inside of her that feels like the scared little girl she used to be who begs her to hide away in this house in these strange suburbs and never,  _ ever  _ leave.

“Are they going to help?” Dibny asks. She looks different with her husband here. Like she’s glowing from the inside, seemingly unable to stop smiling. The ring she’d been wearing on a chain around her neck is back on her finger once more.

Jade nods. “They said they’d be here in two hours. Savage, Blake, the bansidhe, and the contortionist. Maybe others.”

“Good. We’re going to need all the backup we can get,” Dibny sighs before looking up at her husband. “Honey, do you know if we still have friends at Wayne Aerospace?”

* * *

“It’s not your fault,” Dibny says. Or at least Jade’s pretty sure that’s what she’s saying. The sound of the helicopter drowns it out. She takes Jade’s hand in her own. “Strix doesn’t blame you, and neither do we.”

Jade wants to say that she can’t possibly know what Strix thinks about being abandoned again. How it’s  _ all  _ of their faults for letting Lady Shiva just walk away with her, but Jade’s most of all, because she’s the only one of them (aside from Strix herself) who could have stood a sliver of a chance against her. She wants to, but she doesn’t. There’s no point in wasting time talking.

The kiss Dibny presses to her cheek is feather-light, and Jade chooses to pull her in again for another one, much longer and on the lips this time.

“Don’t worry,” she says when she pulls back, even though she knows Sue-not-just-Dibny can’t hear her. “I only poison my nails.”

“What?” Sue shouts, trying to yell over the noise and the heavy headphones blocking her ears.

Jade bares her teeth into the most sincere smile she’s worn in years and jumps.

* * *

“You can’t possibly hope to defeat her,” Jade remarks, knocking the sword of a League member aside easily with one of her sais. The tip barely has to flick his throat to open it, blood bubbling as it makes contact with the poison on the blade. It’s not traditional for them to be so sharp, but it’s not like the old masters can punish her for it. If they could, they would have done so already. “No one can.”

“We’ll see about that,” Thomas mutters beside her, tackling another one of Lady Shiva’s men to the ground and slicing open his face with the claws on his gloves. Those are new. A cute touch. “She’s never fought me before. An even if I can’t beat her, I can at least distract her.”

Jade doesn’t dignify that with a response. If he truly thinks he can best Lady Shiva herself, he’s an even bigger idiot than she thought. 

Scandal and her lover are working their way in from the other side, but Jade knows that they’re not going to reach Strix at the eye of their little storm before she does. They should consider that a good thing, since even a (now former) Female Fury wouldn’t be able to stop a Lady Shiva on the warpath.

She peels away from Thomas as the bodies she cuts through increase and blur together. The saki of the sai in her right hand breaks and she ignores it, switching to a more traditional style on that side only to compensate. She sustains injuries of her own, and her blood and the blood of strangers stains her clothes and skin. She ignores that, too. Only one thing matters, and that’s finding Strix before Lady Shiva can kill her.

The battle she finds is mesmerizing.

Both of them are almost completely silent. No barbs, and no gasps or cries of pain or exertion, either. The two of them are living weapons, a pair of swords clashing in a shower of sparks. Someone without Jade’s eye might think of the two of them as animalistic, but in reality it is the most human fight she’s ever witness. Two people disciplined and proud and bloody. Strix can’t win the fight, and Jade is certain that all three of them know it, but the message in her body is clear— _ if I go down, I’m taking as much of you as I possibly can with me. _

“Lady Shiva,” Jade says softly. Neither of them respond, they’re too well trained, but she knows they heard her. As she watches, Strix pins her only to get easily knocked aside. “You can’t keep her. I’ll fight you for her if I have to.”

_ “We’ll  _ fight you for her,” Porcelain corrects, coming up at her right shoulder. They’re limping, and somewhere under their bright white costume they’re bleeding, but their eyes are bright and they’re still determinedly clinging to their hammer. They’re well aware that if Cheshire doesn’t stand a chance then they’ll fall even faster, but it doesn’t matter. Strix became their sister. Family is an honor even greater than sacrifice.

Strix and Lady Shiva break apart, both of them panting as they circle each other. Lady Shiva addresses them directly even though she doesn’t take her eyes off of her opponent. “This doesn’t concern you,” she says coldly. “Strix chose to leave your family to become a part of mine.”

“Not how it works.” This time it’s Thomas who speaks, words hissed through the blood Jade can see dripping from his mouth and from his chest out of the corner of her eye. He inclines his head in her direction. “Us cats don’t turn our backs on our families.”

“You turned your back on  _ my  _ sisterhood,” Lady Shiva growls. Jade narrows her eyes. Her and Lady Shiva—her and Sandra Wu-San were a lot of things to each other over the many years they’ve known each other, but they were never sisters.

“We’re taking her back,” Jade says stiffly. She looks away from Lady Shiva, even if it’s a potentially deadly mistake, to rest her gaze solely on Strix. “We are. She’s not going to be your sister. She’s already mine.”

For someone so capable at killing, Strix seems awfully small when she throws caution to the winds and latches onto Jade in a hug so tight it nearly crushes the air from her lungs.

Lady Shiva lets them go despite the fact that they all know none of them could beat her. Maybe it’s because she knew Black Alice was serious about hurling the whole building into the sun. Maybe it’s because she respects Jade and her choices. Maybe it’s because of a different factor entirely. But she lets them go all the same.

In the helicopter graciously donated by someone at Wayne Aerospace, Strix curls up small and rests her head on Jade’s lap and finally closes her eyes, sleeping for the first time in days and for the first time Jade has ever seen. Jade finds herself rubbing her back slowly and carefully, kicking away Strix’s mask whenever it rolls back over as the helicopter dips and turns. If Jade has her way, she’ll never have to wear that awful  _ thing  _ or any mask like it again. Not even the bandages, if Strix doesn’t want to hide her face behind them anymore.

Later, they will track down that traitorous witch Belzer. Later, she will tell Thomas that while she doesn’t know if she can ever forgive him for what he did to her, she thanks him for his help all the same. Later, Dibny will mention that they need to get Strix a new augmentative communication device, taking Jade’s hand and squeezing it tight.

Right now there are six, eight, ten, eleven of them packed together inside the helicopter, and Jade Nguyen is smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm @augustheart on tumblr and I decided to call this universe "momswap" because nobody told me not to.


End file.
